


you can rest

by seoseouls (kihoseok)



Series: One shots bc im a lazy pos [3]
Category: Monsta X
Genre: Angst, M/M, hyunwoo is sad, i havent slept for 3(?) days, minhyuk is sick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9919802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihoseok/pseuds/seoseouls
Summary: “I'm so afraid. Because I'm so profoundly happy. Happiness like this is frightening...They only let you this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.”





	

        _ **“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...” -Khaled Hosseini**_  
        Sometimes, Hyunwoo liked to wonder what his life would be like had he not decided to visit his grandfather in the hospital ward. 

        A year prior, Hyunwoo's grandfather had been dying of lung cancer, a side effect of working in the mines for far too long. He had meant to return from the city to the old village where he was born to support the man who had raised him, but there had always been a delay. _One more exam. One more rent payment. One more work shift._ By the time he had reached the village with the money he needed for the treatment, it was already too late. He had remembered the ripping feeling of hopelessness in his chest, the inescapable weight pressing down on his heart and lungs as he had almost crumpled to the floor when the doctor had told him. _Too late, he was too late._

          
        The funeral had been a simple affair, just Hyunwoo and a small handful of family and friends. He pretended not to hear the whispers about him, about the callous grandson who had been too wrapped up in the city lights to come back to visit his dying grandfather. The grandson who hadn't been able to save the man who had cared for him all his life. _The grandson who was too late._

        Hyunwoo had kept his head bowed the entire service, barely looking up to even speak to his relatives offering half-hearted condolences to the man they blamed. When the coffin was finally laid in the dirt after everyone but Hyunwoo had left, he knelt down, throwing in a blue flower from his grandfather's garden onto the casket, watching as he released the first handful of dirt onto the top of the box. He watched as the dirt bounced off of the simple hardwood and tainted the flower petals. He watched as the grave diggers filled the hole, throwing shovelful after shovelful on top of the box. He walked away without a word, determined not to embarrass his grandfather and disgrace his memory by crying like a baby at his funeral. He wanted so badly to run back, to tackle the diggers and scream _'No'_ and plead until they stopped because that was his grandfather, the man who raised him. Hyunwoo felt with every sound of more dirt filling the hole, he could feel his childhood and everything he knew slipping further away.

///////////

        That, he supposes, is how he ended up where he was now. He had moved back to the village to stay closer to home and reconnect with his old friends. Housing wasn't a problem as he had inherited his grandfather's house and land, but it never felt quite right. Hyunwoo never felt it was truly his, he kept everything the same, kept everything of his grandfather's in the same place as it had been. The only thing that was remotely his was his old room which still didn't feel _quite right_. It reminded him of other times, times before he had left, times before things fell apart.

        But that's not the point now, is it?

        He stood in the very ward where his grandfather had died, holding his hand to his chest. for the past six months, he had volunteered at the hospital to provide company to patients with no friends or family to visit them. He knew how lonely his grandfather must have been, how horrid it must have felt. He couldn't stand the thought of someone suffering alone through that, suffering through what his grandfather had. He had a new patient today he had been told by the charge nurse, a kind woman named Jisoo, that he was Hyunwoo's age. He wasn't used to people his age, he had only experienced elderly patients and the occasional child that broke his heart with its undying optimism. 

        "Hyunwoo?" Jisoo's voice startled him out of his thoughts causing him to snap his head up. "He's ready for you," she said, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder. "He's a good kid, Hyunwoo. There's no need to be nervous."

        He just nodded.

 

        When he entered the room, he was greeted by a man with stark white hair lying in a hospital bed, monitors beeping steadily around him as he looked down at the red bracelet adorning his wrist. What first struck Hyunwoo was how out of place he looked compared to everything. The looked too pure, too innocent and promising for the grimness of the ward. Everything in the hospital contradicted this man, he was all soft edges and gentle lines and colors, opposed to the harshness of the hospital. The stark white walls and pungent stench of sterile _everything_. This boy looked like he belonged in a field of flowers or a romance movie, not a hospital.

        "Hello." The simple word had escaped his lips before he knew it the angel boy's head looking up and his smiling eyes greeting Hyunwoo's own.

        "Hello," he replied, smiling. "I'm Minhyuk. Lee Minhyuk. Well, I suppose you already know that considering I'm a new charge probably." He said, giving Hyunwoo an appraising squint. "Wait, you're not a nurse.'

        It wasn't a question, but Hyunwoo shook his head anyways. "No, I'm a volunteer," He said hesitantly. People reacted differently to him, some insisting the didn't need him, sending him out in a fit of rage because they didn't want to be pitied or seen as a charity case. Hyunwoo understood, and he never angered towards them. The others kept him around to be polite, never really having their heart into it, just not wanting to be rude. Others genuinely seemed to enjoy his company, treasuring the time he was there with them. Judging by the grin on Minhyuk's face, he guessed the boy would be the last option.

        "Oh! You're one of those volunteer companion things that reads to kids right?" He asked, his eyes lighting up with curiosity Hyunwoo had thought to be exclusive to children until that moment.

        "Well, not exactly. That's not all we do, we just offer our overall company to people. It doesn't have to just be reading." he explained, confused when a pout formed on Minhyuk's lips.

        "Awww, I actually wanted someone to read to me," he gestured to the book on the flimsy hospital table next to him. "I can't read for long amounts of time anymore, it gives me headaches." he continued, still pouting towards the novel.

        "Do you want me to? Read to you, I mean." Hyunwoo asked, feeling a slight pink tint rise to his ears. 

        "Really? That would be great!" Minhyuk said, leaning over and grabbing the book before tossing it in a lazy arc to Hyunwoo who caught it with ease.

///////////////////

        “'I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.'” Hyunwoo read, looking up from the book and pausing to see if Minhyuk was still following along. Occasionally the boy would have things to add to the text, and this was no exception.

        "Do you have someone who you need to forgive?" he asked, looking at Hyunwoo with eyes that held galaxies. 

        "No."

        "Do you have people who you need to forgive you?" When Hyunwoo had just looked at him with despairing eyes, Minhyuk hadn't pressed it, and Hyunwoo had been grateful for his silence. 

//////////////////

        Over the next month, Minhyuk and Hyunwoo met more and more. Hyunwoo came to visit Minhyuk more, bringing flowers from his garden once, citing that it was "too boring" in Minhyuk's room. They talked like friends, discussing their days and Hyunwoo's work outside the hospital. Minhyuk always listened, providing oohs and ahs in all the right places for Hyunwoo to feel listened to (He knew Minhyuk listened anyways) and he provided Minhyuk someone to help break the monotony of hospital life. Their progress on the book had been slow as they always discussed every point they could with each other, small seemingly insignificant confessions.

        _"I'm afraid I'll never leave here."_

_"I'm afraid I'll never be forgiven"_

_"I'm terrified of dying."_

_"I'm terrified of being too late again."_

//////////////

        Another month passed, and Hyunwoo knew Minhyuk wasn't getting better. He had known the moment Minhyuk had hobbled out of his bed for the first time since he'd known him and pressed his chapped lips to Hyunwoo like it was the last time he'd ever see him. Hyunwoo had picked the other boy up, laying him gently back in his bed before kissing the smaller boy gently, caressing the paper thin skin of his cheek with his hand. 

        It was love. It was doomed, it was horrible, it was imperfect, it was dreadful, but it was love.

        When he had pulled away and seen Minhyuk smiling from below him, he felt the very stars align, if only for a second.

          ** _“It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But I'll take it."_**

////////////

_**“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself."** _

        Towards the end, Hyunwoo took Minhyuk to his home. He showed him the flowers and the fields, showed him his childhood photos and his little marks on the house. The place where he had chipped the tile of the kitchen floor while trying to bring in a huge stone for his rock collection when he was seven, or the large covered hole in the wall from when Hyunwoo and his childhood friend Hoseok had been wrestling and run into the wall, effectively breaking it. (Hyunwoo's grandfather had likened the force of the two to that of a grown bull). He bore all his flaws for Minhyuk to see, and that day they had lain in the field next to Hyunwoo's house and kissed among the flowers, praying for time to stop in that moment.

///////////////////////

        “'She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.'”  Hyunwoo read, staring and Minhyuk's sleeping face after he had finished the page. The boy's health had gotten worse, good days where he looked like the angel Hyunwoo had met all those months ago becoming few and far between.

        He loved him anyways.

////////////////////

        The end came sooner than Hyunwoo had thought. 

        He walked into the ward with his usual air of slight excitement, only to see doctors running about the facility, yelling something about a patient crashing. Hyunwoo saw the all running into Minhyuk's room and felt the breath leave his lungs, a million things filling his mind but the most prominent being _**"No,"**_. He threw himself int the room, only to be thrown back out by a heavily built orderly. His cries of _"Please hold on,"_ and _"Don't leave me,"_ lost in the din of the nurses and doctors and the deafening sound of a flatlining heart monitor.

/////////////

        A week later, Hyunwoo found himself repeating the process he had done almost two years before. This time there was no crowd, no gravediggers or priest, just Hyunwoo, a casket, and a shovel. Minhyuk had on relatives to mourn him, no next of kin. The hospital had let Hyunwoo take him, and as he lowered the box containing the love of his life, he wasn't able to tell if it was the oh-so-cliche rain or tears streaming down his face.

        He didn't care. 

        _**“I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.”**_ //////////////

        Years later, Hyunwoo is standing over the grave, holding his fiancee, Jooheon's hand. The friends fell in love, sharing kisses and memories and pain. Jooheon knew Hyunwoo would never truly be over Minhyuk, just as he would never be over Changkyun. Their first loves would always be their first loves, nothing would change that. 

        "Minhyuk-ah," Hyunwoo began staring down at the small headstone. "This is Jooheon. He-he's my fiancee," He said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I wanted to tell you we're doing well, and that I hope you're happy wherever you are. I miss you." He said, turning to walk away, the pain in his chest a dull ache.

        For a moment, he swears he sees Minhyuk's smiling face in the flowers. 

_**“In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.”** _

**Author's Note:**

> as a note, the quotes i am using are all from the book the kite runner


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